Peyton made an impatient movement of negation. "If she was, why didn't she
prove it? She hadn't a shred of evidence. The courts rejected her appeal."

"Well, then--?"

"Well, she's dead." He paused, and the next words came with difficulty.
"She and the child."

"The child? There was a child?"

"Yes."

Kate started up and then sank down. These were not things about which young
girls were told. The confused sense of horror had been nothing to this
first sharp edge of fact.

"And both are dead?"

"Yes."

"How do you know? My father said she had gone away--gone back to the
West--"

"So we thought. But this morning we found her."

"Found her?"

He motioned toward the window. "Out there--in the lake."